ort--isn't this comfort? Please _do_ eat the beefsteak, papa."

Carroll began obediently to eat his supper. When he had fairly begun
he realized that he was nearly famished. In spite of his stress of
mind, the needs of the flesh reasserted themselves. He could not
remember anything tasting so good since his boyhood. He ate his
beefsteak and potatoes and toast; then Charlotte brought forward with
triumph a little dish of salad, and finally a charlotte-russe.

"I got these at the baker's in New Sanderson," said she. She was
dimpling with delight. She looked very young, and yet the man
continued to have that sense of dependence upon her. She exulted
openly over her supper, her cooking, and her return. "I don't know
but I was very deceitful, papa," she said, but with glee rather than
compunction. "Amy and Anna had no idea that I did not mean to go with
them to Aunt Catherine's, and oh, papa, what do you think I did? What
do you?"

"What, dear?"

"My trunk was packed with, with--some old sheets and blankets and
newspapers--and all my clothes are hanging in my closet up-stairs."
Charlotte laughed a long ring of laughter. "I knew I was deceitful,"
she said again, and laughed again.

Carroll did not laugh. He was thinking of the Hungarian girl in
Charlotte's red dress, but Charlotte thought he was sober on account
of her deceit.

"Do you think it was very wrong, papa?" she asked, with sudden
seriousness, eying him wistfully. "I will write and tell Amy to-night
all about it. I couldn't think of any other way to do, papa."

"I met Marie as I was coming home from the station this morning,"
Carroll said, irrelevantly.

Charlotte looked at him quickly, blushed, and raised her teacup.

"I thought at first, though I knew it could not be, that I saw you
coming," said he; "something about her dress--"

"Papa," said Charlotte, setting down her cup, and she was
half-crying--"papa, I had to. Marie was so shabby, and she said that
her lover had deserted her because she was so poorly dressed; and
though of course he could not be a very good man, nor very loyal to
desert her for such a reason as that, yet those people are different,
perhaps, and don't look at things as we do; and Marie has got another
place; but--but she--didn't have any money, you know, and she didn't
really have a dress fit to be seen, and that dress I gave her I did
not need at all--I really did not, papa. I have plenty besides, and
so I gave it to her, and my